The data on actual time seems to refute the ideas of FIFA and Lega Serie A.
“I am Don Quixote, and my profession is that of a knight. My laws are to undo wrongs, bestow good and avoid evil. I flee from the gift of life, from ambition and hypocrisy, and seek the narrowest and most difficult path for my glory. Is this perhaps foolish?“: it is chapter XV of the second volume of Don Quixote of La Mancha, and the protagonist feels the extreme need to further claim his essence, as if the 3 prologues and 66 previous chapters had not properly framed him. He does it because Alonso Fernández de Avellanedapseudonym of the apocryphal man who took it upon himself to complete the drafting of the work interrupted by the death of Cervantes, wants to demonstrate that he has understood and studied even the most hidden corners of Alonso Chisciano.
The image of the fight against windmills, in this sense, has been far too abused but it lends itself well to describing the behavior of Stefano Pioli as Milan coach when it comes to the length of matches. In an interview after the Juventus-Milan 1-1 match on 19 September 2021, for example, Pioli says: “Today we played 48 minutes of actual time. There’s too much talking, too much whistling, there’s too much downtime, and this doesn’t help either the show or the teams to play with intensity.“. In a chat with Sergio Scariolo in a meeting broadcast on the official Youtube channel of Virtus Bologna during the national team break on 17 November 2021 he reiterates: “Sare to introduce time-outs in football. I would also be for the actual time, I would put a time-out in the middle of the first half to be more specific and precise with my intervention“.
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Again, speaking to DAZN at the end of Turin-Milan on 10 April 2022: “At the end of the match I told the referee that it is useless to grant so many minutes of injury time if the pace of the match is not sufficiently protected first“. One last time, on Sky, 5 December 2022: “I have a hard time understanding why the actual time isn’t reached. Collina’s motivation is correct, because we also happened to play 46′-47′. I don’t know how to extend recovery time that much. Why do you play so much of those 12 minutes? I would be in favor of two 30′ halves, the players would waste less time. You can’t allow the goalkeeper to waste time in the first 45 minutes“.
So why consider the Rossoneri coach’s insistence as a battle with windmills, like grandfather Simpson shouting at the clouds; an unheard delirium instead of a source of constructive and enriching debate? Because the issue is poorly expressed and understood even worse by those in charge. Naturally, Pioli refers to specific situations at Milan, adding references to the European football panorama, conveying a message not supported by numbers. In fact, the statements reported above contain, in the full version, references to the measurement adopted in Europe and in the Champions League in relation to the management of additional time. According to Pioli, the European approach would be different from that of the AIA but, in fact, it is quite comparable, as can also be seen from the Serie A statisticswhich is why it will not be the subject of comparison.
When Pioli refers to Collina’s “motivation”, it is inevitable that he was referring to statements of the President of the FIFA Referees Commission regarding the bogeyman – or at least the perceived one as such, like a weapon brandished in the hands of a madman – of the maxirecuperi di Qatar 2022. The former Bolognese referee explains in December 2022: “The issue of matches lasting even less than 50 minutes of actual time is something that comes from a long time ago. Like FIFA and IFAB we have been asking for years to do something, to try to have more time to play during a match. We gave our referees some specific indications, to be considered carefully, in particular the time for player injuries which had already been calculated, but in a standardized way, for one minute (instead of 30 seconds, ed.) for each intervention.
Adds Collina: “(The celebrations, ed.) are a moment of joy for those who score, but it takes a lot of time to celebrate a goal, and there are fewer opportunities for the opponents to play. So the time spent for the ‘celebration’ of goals, and then obviously the one for VAR interventions, both when there is a delay in resuming play due to a check carried out by the video match officials, and for the review when the referee goes to the monitor Here in Qatar after 32 games we average about ten minutes per game.”. To what has been journalistically defined as the “Rule of Mercy“The Italian top flight has also adapted.
In fact, the president of the Lega Serie A, Lorenzo Casinithrough official channels had positively welcomed the proposal just two weeks after Collina’s words: “The issue of uniformity of match lengths is important“. Adapting the written regulations to the new IFAB rules would not have been possible during the current season – at least not officially – and therefore the first Serie A is currently being developed without the possibility of appealing to interpretations for everything concerning the time to be recover.
The implementations compared to the previous version of the FIGC regulation are highlighted.
To avoid rough analyses and based on a sample that is too small and inconsistent, one idea to evaluate how much and how the public positions taken by those who have the power to concretely influence the dynamics of Italian football was to collect data from the last two complete seasons of Serie A (2021/22 and 2022/23) and those of 2023/24 up to the 20th matchday for average minutes of recovery per day and actual time per shift.
In first 12 matchdays of the A 2021/22 seasonin short, until the aforementioned Pioli-Scariolo dialogue, the total injury time minutes played (not assigned but actually played) for the 10 Serie A matches of each day were 65.25 (Lega Serie A data), with a percentage of effective time (i.e. time with the ball in play compared to the total) of 51.75%obviously calculated not on the basic 90′ but on the entire recovery.
In the rest of the season (13th-38th matchdays, 2021/22), the injury time became 64 and the effective time reached 51.78%: you add a little less, you play the same. Even net of Pioli’s complaints, the total average for 2021/22 in Serie A stands at 64 minutes of total injury time per round and 51.77% of effective play. Colorful note: in 8 of the 38 rounds, the teams that played the match with the longest recovery of the day were Salernitana, Spezia and Cagliari. There Romaimmediately behind the most recoveredon 7 occasions he had the match with more injury time allocated.
A first opinion, justified and argued.
In first 15 matches of the 2022/23 seasoni.e. those preceding the World Cup and the paradigm shift, Serie A seemed ahead of its time (unintended but effective pun): 74.07′ recovered, on average, in turns, with a percentage of effective time of 54.93%; so a minute gross more per match and over 2% more calcium vero on the pitches of the top flight.
From the 16th matchday to the end of the 2022/23 season, in the belief that all the weekend fixtures would soon have to be rescheduled to accommodate the increasingly pronounced offshoots of the matches, the averages say 76.91′ recovered per day and the 56.75% of minutes played. Just under 20″ recovered per match compared to pre-Qatar but almost another 2% more effective time. Numbers bordering on insignificant if measured in the short term, decidedly more impactful if analyzed on average: the annual statistics indicate an increase of 11.79′ of recovery time per round, in line with the +4.26% of effective playing time in 2021/22. Color Note: Salernitana e Spice do they still lead the table, having played the longest match for 8 rounds out of 38? No: 10 times it is there Roma to excel.
What to expect, then, from the 2023/24 season, the first in which the unofficial 2023 rules became official? A systematic integration of some sort of extra time and not even a moment to breathe and take a breath? The first 20 days recorded 87.7 minutes recovered per shift with the 56.2% of actual time; on average, just under 9 minutes of injury time are added to each match. Color note: who are the two teams that played the most? Obviously they Roma (6 shifts out of 20) e Salernitana (4)
In short, in Serie A you spend an extra minute per match waiting for the referee’s final whistle but playing, proportionately, less than in the very recent past. In practice, what was supposed to be a deterrent is proving to be an ineffective panacea; Serie A responded roughly to one of his irrational phobias. What would be a desirable correction to improve the enjoyment of football – i.e. playing less – has so far been ignored, despite the players themselves recommending it and then asking for it. Instead, the calendars are becoming increasingly crowded and the races increasingly extended. A correction expected but incapable of satisfying the needs of those who would like to fight the battle against a state of the art that debases its very essence. And he will continue to do so, even at the cost of taking on the appearance of Don Quixote.